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2 Responses

Rel=publisher is more appropriate for e-commerce product pages or for branded websites. I had to search high and low for an answer I posted to a similar question several months ago because it referenced the best (and only, as far as I know), explanation of how to properly set up Google+ and establish Google ASuthorship for a brand or e-commerce site. Here's the text of my comment including a link to the interview:

"I am in-house SEO for two e-commerce site, one large, one small. Rel=publisher is the way to go both on your home page and your product pages. You are correct in that rel=author is not appropriate in these situations. Andy is correct that Google is not yet displaying brands as authors, but I believe that is going to change over time.

Yes, if you mark up your pages for structured data using rel=author, the testing tool will display your brand image. It's just not displaying in Google search results yet.

Recently, Chris Goward of Wider Funnel marketing interviewed Janet Driscoll Miller (President and CEO of Search Mojo) about this very topic and she had some great advice which echoes what I've said above:

Great question. We have dealt with this several times since the rel="author" was released, and our belief is that the rel="author" is best used when the page, website or post should be associated with a person.

A businesses that offers a personalized service like attorneys, doctors, dentists, web designers, etc. are perfect for the author tag because it gives a face to the service, and of course, like you said, blog posts are a great use for the author tag.

Even though we have seen an increase in the click though rate for the sites that we have implemented the author tag, we do not not use it for product websites or pages, just because we feel an author tag does not give a good representation of the actual page/product.

The only exception I can think of is if the product is closely associated and sold by a person like "The George Forman Grill," but we haven't come across a client like that yet.

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